10 Sad Stories of Writers Who Committed Suicide - Toptenz.net Toptenz.net Posted by Shell Harris on October 14, 2009 in Literature , People | 28,493 Views | 27 Responses From the earliest records of ancient civilizations to the most recent works produced by modernity, the history of literature bears witness to the creative power of the human mind. We have before us a vast library of stories, plays, and poetry to enjoy at our leisure, but in some cases this creativity came with a price – the life of the creator. A significant number of writers have struggled with depression and the seductions of suicide, leading some to believe there is often a close connection between artistic skill and the mood swings of a tortured mind. While not all of the following writer-suicides of modernity occurred because of the writer’s battle with depression, many of them did – and there are many, many more that could be added to this list. 10. Yukio Mishima (1925 – 1970) Yukio Mishima was the pen name for Kimitake Hiraoka, a prolific Japanese author, actor, and playwright.

Taken under the wing of his overly protective grandmother until the age of 12, Mishima was not allowed to play with other boys, participate in sports, or even expose himself to sunlight. Mishima’s early fascination with literature and writing led to clashes with his military-minded father, who destroyed any of his son’s manuscripts he found. Still, Mishima enjoyed early success in the academic world, becoming the youngest member of his elite school’s editorial board and subsequently publishing poetry and prose in prestigious magazines. To protect him from the scorn of his classmates, his instructors decided that he should write under a pen name. Mishima graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1947 and continued to publish stories, poems, and plays, while also traveling extensively. Keenly interested in physical fitness and martial arts, he joined the Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF) and later started his own private force called the Shield Society. In 1970, Mishima and four members of this Shield Society took over the Tokyo JSDF headquarters and tied up the commandant. Mishima gave a speech outlining his demands to restore power to the Japanese emperor, and then ended his life by committing seppuku.

He had been carefully planning the suicide for a year. 9. Jerzy Kosinski (1933 -1991) As Jews living in Poland during World War II, the Lewinkopf family had to do everything possible to avoid German capture, so young Jozef Lewinkopf was given the false name Jerzy Kosinski, which he kept as an alias. After the war was over, Kosinski remained in Poland in order to pursue university studies. In 1957, Kosinski emigrated to the United States on a passport obtained by forging papers that “proved” an American foundation was willing to sponsor him. He supported himself by driving a truck until he obtained a grant from the Ford Foundation allowing him to attend Columbia University’s sociology program. In 1965 – the same year he became an American citizen – Kosinski published the novel The Painted Bird, a highly controversial story about a young boy’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Other famous (and also controversial) novels by Kosinski include Steps and Being There. Many people were critical of Kosinski’s writing because of the sexual, violent, and often sadistic topics he chose to portray.

He was thought to rely heavily on ghostwriters and freelance editors for the content of his novels, and was even accused of plagiarism, which he vehemently denied. In addition to the mental exhaustion of dealing with these allegations, Kosinski also suffered from serious physical illnesses later in life. On May 3, 1991, his wife found his body in a half-filled bathtub, a suffocating plastic bag wrapped around his head. “I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual,” read Kosinski’s suicide note. “Call it Eternity.” 8. Hunter S. Thompson (1937 – 2005) Perhaps most famous for his 1972 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Kentucky native Hunter Thompson is remembered for his signature “Gonzo” style of journalism. Avoiding the objective nature of typical reporting, he often wrote in a highly subjective manner, incorporating his own experiences and artistic creativity into stories. The result was a form of writing that blurred the lines between truth and fiction. Thompson’s early journalistic work usually involved editing or reporting sports stories.

Over the years he worked various jobs at quite a few different papers around the United States and even in places like Puerto Rico and Brazil. While researching a story for Rolling Stone about the killing of journalist Ruben Salazar by Los Angeles police, Thompson had the idea for Fear and Loathing, which initially appeared in Rolling Stone in 1971 and gave him the opportunity to write much more for the magazine. From an early age, Thompson clashed with authority and was always outspoken about the rights of privacy and bearing arms (he owned a massive collection of firearms and explosives). He was also known for actively supporting the legalization of marijuana and other drugs. Thompson suffered from various medical problems, which may have been a factor in his suicide. On February 20, with visiting family members in the next room, Thompson put a bullet through his brain and ended his life. “No More Games,” read a note delivered to his wife shortly before the incident. “No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy.

Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.” 7. Richard Brautigan (1935 – 1984) Born in Tacoma, Washington, Richard Brautigan endured a childhood of poverty, parental neglect, and physical abuse. He moved around the Northwest, finally settling in Eugene, Oregon with his mother and stepfather. While in high school, Brautigan wrote articles and poetry for the school newspaper. In 1955, Brautigan was arrested for disorderly conduct and later committed to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with clinical depression and paranoid schizophrenia. He was treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and released, but for most of his life he struggled with depression and alcoholism. Somewhat naïve and eccentric, Brautigan, whose writing style was characterized by a unique sense of humor and a richly imaginative use of metaphor, wrote poems and novels with little success until the publication of Trout Fishing in America (1967), which won him an international readership and the respect of literary critics – the same readers and critics who would dismiss his work in later years.

In October of 1984, Brautigan’s long-dead body was found rotting in his Bolinas, California home, where he lived alone. A .44 Magnum bullet through the brain had finally brought an end to his despair. 6. John Berryman (1914 – 1972) The poet John Berryman was born John Smith in McAlester, Oklahoma. Following his father’s suicide when he was only 12, his mother remarried and his surname was changed. Berryman studied as an undergraduate at Columbia College and later attended Cambridge University on a fellowship. From 1955 until his death, he was a professor at the University of Minnesota. The publication of his 77 Dream Songs (1964), a collection of lyrical sonnets, won him the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He later expanded on this work by adding over three hundred sonnets and publishing the whole collection as The Dream Songs in 1969.

Berryman’s style of poetry incorporated a surprisingly scrambled syntax, purposeful disorder, the use of inside jokes, and hidden meanings, and many readers have found Berryman’s own “explanation” of his work to be very appropriate – “these Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.” Berryman’s lifelong emotional instability and devotion to alcohol eventually led him down the same road blazed by his father years before. On January 7, 1972, he killed himself by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge, which connects the East and West Bank sides of the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus. 5. Karin Boye (1900 – 1941) Known for her compelling, serious writing style that was often symbolic, bleak, and tragic, Swedish poet and novelist Karin Boye was responsible for co-founding the magazine Spektrum, translating T. S. Eliot, and working to introduce surrealism to Swedish readers. Born in Gothenburg, Boye moved to Stockholm in 1909 and spent her early years there, later studying at the University of Uppsala and the University of Stockholm.

Boye published her first collection of poems (Clouds) in 1922, and continued writing poetry and novels throughout her life. Much opposed to totalitarian government, Boye wrote the novel Kallocain, which contained ideas culled from her thoughts while traveling through Germany and the Soviet Union, and which helped inspire the 2002 film Equilibrium. Although she was briefly married to Leif Bjork, a friend from the Socialist Clarté organization, Boye was a lesbian and lived with her partner Margot Hanel for the last ten years of her life. Her depression eventually led to her suicide in April of 1941. After leaving home one day, she was found dead, lying next to a boulder on top of a hill. She had killed herself with an overdose of sleeping medication. 4. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892 – 1927) Born in Tokyo to a mother who later went insane, Ryunosuke (“Dragon Son”) Akutagawa showed an early interest in reading and writing, eventually going on to study English Literature at Tokyo Imperial University.

Known as the father of the Japanese short story, Akutagawa’s writings often focused on psychological disorders, the macabre, and the evils of human nature, frequently reinterpreting historical themes in a modern light. Akutagawa taught English briefly at the Naval Engineering School in Yokosuka, but eventually quit and devoted himself completely to writing. Of the 150 short stories he wrote in his short life, most of these were composed during the last ten years he lived. Paranoid, severely depressed, and suffering from visual hallucinations (such as perceiving maggots in his food), Akutagawa killed himself with an overdose of Veronal at the age of 35. “The world I am now in is one of diseased nerves, lucid as ice,” read part of his suicide note. “Such voluntary death must give us peace, if not happiness…” 3. Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974) The poetry of Anne Sexton is known for being extremely personal and honest; indeed, she is considered one of the modern confessional poets. Much of her writing deals with themes that were usually left alone by other authors – themes like abortion, menstruation, and masturbation.

The manic depression that stayed with Sexton for most of her life also factored heavily into her poetic work. In 1956, Sexton’s therapist recommended that she take up poetry as an outlet for her severe depression. So she did – and it wasn’t long before she saw her poems accepted in major publications, even receiving the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. But despair was always a constant factor. Even as she gained exposure for her poems, the effects of her medications, combined with an increasing alcohol dependency, were slowly putting a damper on her creative fires. She repeatedly made attempts on her own life, and finally she succeeded. On October 4, 1974, right after meeting with a close friend to discuss her latest book of poetry (The Awful Rowing Toward God), Sexton went home, locked herself in the garage with the car running, and succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. 2. Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) “I feel certain that I am going mad again… and I can’t recover this time” – so read the suicide note Virginia Woolf left for Leonard, her husband of almost thirty years.

Born in London and raised there by eminent parents, Woolf had to deal with depression throughout her life. The death of her mother in 1895 resulted in her first nervous breakdown, and when her father passed away in 1904 she suffered a collapse so severe that she had to be institutionalized for a short time. However, Woolf’s mental illness did not prevent her from becoming a successful novelist, essayist, and publisher, and it was through her association with the circle of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group that she met her husband, with whom she enjoyed a long and fulfilling marriage. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928). Shortly after Woolf finished the manuscript for her novel Between the Acts, she once again slipped into a state of severe depression. Afflicted by voices in her head and an ever-increasing despair, Woolf wrote a final note to Leonard, asserting that her disease was beyond healing, yet also telling him how happy her marriage to him had been. On March 28, she slipped on an overcoat weighed down with rocks and drowned herself in the River Ouse.

Her body wasn’t found for three weeks. 1. Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) Born and raised in Oak Park, IL, Ernest Hemingway’s literary talents go all the way back to his teenage years, when he worked as a writer and editor for his high school’s newspaper and yearbook. Post-graduation work as a cub reporter at The Kansas City Star was cut short by his decision to serve as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, and after he returned to the United States he eventually moved to Toronto and gained employment at the Toronto Star Weekly, where he worked as a freelancer, staff writer, and foreign correspondent. Hemingway is best known for writing several novels which are now considered classics of American literature, such as For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man And The Sea (1952). His writing ventures gave him many opportunities to travel, and the things he experienced in such places as France, Spain, Cuba, and Key West became themes for his novels. His contributions to literature won him both the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize (1954).

Hemingway’s love of the bottle developed into alcoholism later in life, leading to high blood pressure and liver problems. Shortly after receiving ECT at Mayo Clinic in 1961, he attempted suicide at his home in Sun Valley. Ten more shock treatments followed, and two days after being released from Mayo Clinic the second time, Hemingway loaded both barrels of his twelve-gauge shotgun, put the weapon in his mouth, and blew his brains out the back of his head. Four other members of Hemingway’s immediate family also committed suicide – his father, two of his siblings, and his granddaughter – leading some to the conclusion that a hereditary disease was at work behind the scenes. | Permalink Here is what you do. Go on to YOU TUBE and type in : Sylvia Plath reading her poem entitled “Daddy”. Its the way that she recites it that gives you a “no wonder she was suicidal” feeling in the pit of your stomach.

As far as Hunter S Thompson (who, yes, is my 20th century literary idol) goes, when he committed suicide at the age of 67, his personal physician said that he should have died 35 years prior to that due to the amount of drugs he was taking. Read “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” and you’ll get what I am talking about. He actually had access to bottles of RAW ETHER !!!………Go Figure. He did have his own reasons for wanting to take his life and that was he did not want to live beyond the age of 50. So at 67, he wrote his suicide note and just simply said that he was tired of living. He had an arsenal of guns and chose a pistol and did the dirty deed. I know life is tough, but I hope that I go beyond 67. | Permalink I am amazed that Sylvia Plath is not on this list. 32 years old and divorced from Ted Hughes (Great Britain’s poet laureate) She did the “deed” by shoving her head into a gas powered stove and put the gas on, while her children were still sleeping.

On a rather distasteful note, I remember recently seeing an episode of “Family Guy” and Meg (the daughter) was distraught and crying over not being invited to a party. Her mother Lois said “well I am going to help you”. So what does Lois do ? She hands Meg a bottle of Ambien and a Sylvia Plath novel………..go figure, Family Guy Famous Writers Who Committed Suicide - Boldsky.com »Famous Writers Who Committed Suicide Famous Writers Who Committed Suicide Updated: Friday, July 6, 2012, 14:38 [IST] Subscribe to Boldsky They say that geniuses are always a little whacked in the head. Literary history tells us that many creative minds have been prone to suicidal thoughts. There have been numerous instances where writers have committed suicide. Call it coincidence or an occupational hazard of creative work, suicide seems to be running in the profession of writing. Not only is suicide a hard core reality, but also a recurrent theme in works of these writers. These are the 4 most famous writers who committed suicide. There are many more but these 5 are discussed here are by virtue of their bizarreness and violence.

Famous Writers Who Committed Suicide: 1. Ernest Hemingway: He taught people how to live in his short novella, 'The Old Man And The Sea' but he could not master in the art of living himself. Beneath the handsome exterior of an ex-army man, was a deeply troubled man. Ernest Hemingway's tryst with violence in the Spanish Civil War produced the amazing novel 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' but it left him scarred for life. He also has a rare hereditary disease called haemochromatosis that leads to excess iron deposition in the body. This disease may or may not have contributed to the writer's suicide but he killed himself using a shot gun in 1961. The suicidal gene ran in the family; suicide claimed his father, brother and sister too! 2. Virginia Woolf: Her last letter to her husband is as famous as it is heartbreaking. The book (later made into a movie) 'The Hours' gives us a deep insight into this exceptional writer's creative process and also her terrible mental trauma. Virginia Woolf, famous for her novel Mrs.

Dalloway and her 'stream of consciousness' narrative technique, committed suicide by drowning herself in the river Ouse with her pockets full of stones. She was suffering from depression and heard imaginary voices at times. Sexually abused by her step brothers is often stated as a possible cause of her mental illness. 3. Edgar Allan Poe: This poet's suicide is a strange one because we will never know what was the exact cause of his death. The fact that he was bitten by a man dog and died of untreated rabies is one of the conspiracy theories. However, Poe had a history of alcoholism and suicide. He had attempted to kill himself several times but finally succumbed to death in 1849. With this writer, suicide and death was an obsession. This obsession transcends his life and can be seen in his works too. Raven, his most famous work is full of destructive images of death and lost love. 4. Sylvia Plath: This American poet has suicide as the main theme of her only novel 'The Bell Jar'. This novel describes her experience at a mental institution in an almost autobiographical tone.

She underwent several treatments for clinical depression and finally gassed herself at the age of 30 after being abandoned by her husband (Ted Hughes who was a poet). Her entire life including her literary works was a plot that culminated in her suicide. Her last poem 'The Edge' is like her final suicide note to the world, the last act of a great artist. It is very difficult to say why writers commit suicide or even get suicidal thoughts. A genial poem by Charles Bukowski titled 'The impossibility of being human', describes all these violent deaths of writers and poets. It is like an apt epitaph to all these troubled souls. Read more about: bizarre , literature Story first published: Friday, July 6, 2012, 14:22 [IST] Top 10 Suicidal Writers - Listverse Top 10 Suicidal Writers Mike Devlin January 30, 2012 Although the image of the tortured artist might seem like a stereotypical archetype, there seems no shortage of evidence that people of a creative bent often suffer from mental illness.

The examples are manifold – Van Gogh, the painter who had, according to art critic Robert Hughes “…fits of despair and hallucination during which he could not work, and in between them, long clear months in which he could and did, punctuated by extreme visionary ecstasy.” He was known for cutting off his ear during one of his episodes and giving it to a prostitute. He died of a self inflicted gunshot wound. Beethoven was known for periods of melancholy and was likely bipolar. William Blake, scion of the Romantic Age, was considered a lunatic by his peers. What precise facet of mental illness lends certain minds their ingenious spark will probably forever be open to conjecture. We do know that the pain involved often leads these people to the ultimate act of self destruction. Below follows a list of ten famous authors who either committed or attempted suicide. 10 Jack London The author of such rugged tales as The Call of the Wild and White Fang, Jack London was a strange, fierce man of socialist ideals. When his mother was pregnant with him, she tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum and shooting herself in the head. The pistol misfired.

London grew up to be an oyster pirate, a gold digger, and a revolutionary – pushing for political assassinations and calling for the genocide of various races depending on his mood. It is believed London was bipolar – he was also an alcoholic, and frequently suicidal. He may or may not have killed himself with a morphine overdose. 9 Kurt Vonnegut Perhaps best known for his book Slaughterhouse-Five, a satire about the author’s own experiences during World War II, Kurt Vonnegut was likely born with the seed of mental illness. His mother committed suicide in 1944, overdosing on sleeping pills. Vonnegut considered himself a humanist and eschewed religion for the most part. His writing was in the darkly humorous vein of Mark Twain, who he adored. He suffered from depression and attempted to kill himself in 1984. His own son Mark was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and some elements of schizophrenia. 8 Hunter S. Thompson The founder of Gonzo Journalism, Thompson is best remembered for his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and a wild, irreverent lifestyle of guns, drugs, and hard drink.

He was reckless to the point of suicide, indeed getting his start by riding with the Hell’s Angels and doing an expose. When they realized his intentions, they beat him down. In his later years, Thompson lived in a rural compound in Colorado. He succumbed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2005. His suicide note read: “No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 More than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun – for anybody. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.” 7 Sylvia Plath Plath suffered terribly from depression; during her college years she had both electroconvulsive and insulin shock therapy, and attempted suicide. She funneled many of these experiences into her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. She attempted suicide again in a car accident, and left her husband after she caught him cheating with another woman. She finally succeeded in killing herself, inhaling carbon dioxide fumes from her oven. She was only 30, and left behind two small children.

6 John Kennedy Toole Toole was unique to this list in that all his work was released posthumously. A professor at Tulane University, he attempted to sell his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster. Despite its promise, the manuscript was not sufficiently plot driven to attract interest. Toole took his rejection dreadfully, gaining and enormous amount of weight, his wit and good humor vanishing. After an argument with his mother, he went on a road trip, culminating in his suicide. In Biloxi, Mississippi, he ran a garden hose from the exhaust of his car in through the window and died. Years later, his mother convinced novelist Walker Percy to read A Confederacy of Dunces. Percy was blown away by the enormous potential of the manuscript, and used his influence to have it published. The book, a comic masterpiece, won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 5 Edgar Allan Poe Poe was a tortured genius, having lived through a great deal of personal tragedy, including the death of his wife in her early twenties (she was also his cousin).

He turned to drugs and alcohol, and his intense melancholy and obsession with death can clearly be seen in his work, especially perhaps The Raven, a dirge of lost love that brought him to national prominence. He attempted suicide in 1848. He was found delirious in a Baltimore tavern. He died on October 7, 1849. The cause of his death has remained a mystery to this day, with theories as unlikely as rabies considered. 4 Virginia Woolf Woolf’s most famous work was Mrs. Dalloway, a well praised novel that explored themes of mental illness, homosexuality, and existence itself. She suffered a number of nervous breakdowns, and was briefly institutionalized in 1904, after her father died. She later reported sexual abuse at the hands of her half brothers that likely contributed to her psychological issues. World War II fueled her pain – her London home was destroyed by the Germans during the Blitz. On March 28, 1941, she drowned herself in the River Ouse, the pockets of her coat laden down with stones. Her body wasn’t found for nearly a month. She left a heartbreaking suicide note for her husband.

3 Raymond Chandler Chandler was the father of Philip Marlowe, the hard-nosed, wise-cracking private detective played by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep. He didn’t publish his first novel until he was in his fifties. He was a hard drinking, somewhat irascible man who had a tendency toward clinical depression. When his wife, who was 18 years his senior, died in 1954, he went off the deep end, attempting suicide in 1955. His gritty, minimalist prose has long been celebrated since his death in 1959. 2 David Foster Wallace Wallace, a personal favorite, is best known for his novel Infinite Jest, a massive magnum opus of nearly half a million words, including wildly detailed and tangential footnotes. A college professor, he was adored by students and readers alike for his humble, self-effacing manner and incredible sense of empathy. His work is not easily approached, but his keen perception and understanding has the uncommon ability to make readers feel less alone. Wallace suffered from crippling depression his entire life, and it was only through use of medication that he was able to operate.

After experiencing bad side effects from his antidepressant, he attempted to wean himself off the drug. Unfortunately, his depression returned, and despite electroconvulsive therapy, the pain was too much for him to bear. He hung himself on September 12, 2008. Fragments of a novel he was working on for years were assembled posthumously and published under the title The Pale King. 1 Ernest Hemingway Beneath the brash exterior of the man responsible for The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway suffered from mental illness throughout his life. In retrospect, psychologists assert he may have been bipolar, with certain personality disorders. He may have also suffered from brain damage from his many brushes with violence. It is certain he had haemochromatosis, a rare hereditary disorder which causes iron overload in the body and has many devastating side effects. In the late 1950s, his health began to fail, and by 1960, he was lost. Electroconvulsive therapy failed to help him. He killed himself with a shotgun in 1961.

Suicide ran in the Hemingway family – Ernest’s father, his sister Ursula, his brother Leicester, and granddaughter Mariel also succumbed. More Great Lists Ernest Hemingway - The Hemingways and Suicide The Hemingways and Suicide contact us On this day in 1961 Ernest Hemingway committed suicide at the age of sixty-one. There have been five suicides in the Hemingway family over four generations -- Hemingway's father, Clarence; siblings Ursula, Leicester and Ernest; granddaughter Margaux. The generation skipped was just barely: Hemingway's youngest son, Gregory, died in 2001 as a transsexual named Gloria, of causes that put a lot of strain on the term "natural." Memoirs written by those close to Hemingway convey different impressions of his suicide. Mary Hemingway does not refuse the idea that it was a noble, destroyed-but-not-defeated act, but she stresses the sure fact that her husband was mentally ill, and getting worse.

Brother Leicester chooses the heroic interpretation: "Like a samurai who felt dishonored by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed him." Having hunted with his big brother, and heard him talk about giving animals "the gift of death," Leicester believes that Hemingway chose to give it to himself. Greg categorizes his father's death as "semi-voluntary," an act born of lifelong defiance and momentary delusion. Whatever the truth of the death, the son's memoir, Papa, provides interesting snapshots of the life. Greg was a child of Hemingway's second marriage, and his quality time with Dad came early. When Hemingway died, he hadn't seen him for a decade, since the age of nineteen. This last visit was just after the death of Greg's mother, Pauline, an event that had occurred suddenly, and about the time that Greg had gotten into trouble for taking drugs. The visit to his father's home in Cuba seemed to go well, or well enough for Greg to confide his plans for medical school, and to bring up his drug incident. "It wasn't so bad, really, Papa," he said. "No? Well, it killed Mother," said Papa.

The memoir also describes moments of gentler love and honesty, and humor: Greg recalls the time Hemingway, in one of his arm-around-shoulder moods, congratulated him for his fine attempt at a short story, which Greg had cribbed word for word from Turgenev -- one of the masters his father prided himself on knowing. But there are many other moments that cast a shadow, one long enough for Greg to write that he was glad that his father was dead so "I couldn't disappoint him any more." The writing of Papa must have brought Hemingway's son some therapy or confessional relief not found elsewhere -- "I shot eighteen elephants one month, God save my soul" -- though clearly not enough, given his last years. In 1998, Gregory's daughter, Lorian Hemingway, published her own memoir, Walk on Water. This too is a dark and troubled tale of underparenting, overdrinking and the family wrestle with suicide, in this case with a happy ending. Lorian's inheritance also included the outdoor life, her trial-by-sport moment coming not by bullfight or hunting rifle but by fishing rod.

In Chapter Ten of her memoir she describes catching her first and last marlin, and gaining the understanding that "strength and courage and a whopping death wish were the banners of the true sportsman." Chapter Eleven begins: I had visited my grandfather's grave in Ketchum the summer I had caught the marlin, arriving at the small hillside cemetery on a scalding July day, a half-finished fifth of vodka in one hand, a filter-tip cigar in the other. I'd made my way to the simple marble slab marked by a white cross, and stood swaying over the marker for a long time, expecting epiphany, resolution, a crashing, blinding flash of insight.... I wanted to say something of value to the old man, perhaps that I had met a dare he had set forth by example, but nothing came. The neck of the bottle grew hot in my hand. I tipped it to my mouth, taking a long swig, then poured the rest, a stream of booze, clear as Caribbean waters, at the head of the marker. "Here," I said, "have this," and walked away.

— SK Hemingway Dead of Shotgun Wound; Wife Says He Was Cleaning Weapon Hemingway Dead of Shotgun Wound; Wife Says He Was Cleaning Weapon Special to The New York Times etchum, Idaho, July 2--Ernest Hemingway was found dead of a shotgun wound in the head at his home here today. His wife, Mary, said that he had killed himself accidentally while cleaning the weapon. The New York Times Hemingway's obituary ran on the front page of The New York Times on July 3, 1961. Mr. Hemingway, whose writings won him a Nobel Prize and a Pulitzer Prize, would have been 62 years old July 21. Frank Hewitt, the Blaine County Sheriff, said after a preliminary investigation that the death "looks like an accident." He said, "There is no evidence of foul play." The body of the bearded, barrel-chested writer, clad in a robe and pajamas, was found by his wife in the foyer of their modern concrete house. A double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun lay beside him with one chamber discharged. Mrs.

Hemingway, the author's fourth wife, whom he married in 1946, issued this statement: "Mr. Hemingway accidentally killed himself while cleaning a gun this morning at 7:30 A.M. No time has been set for the funeral services, which will be private." Mrs. Hemingway was placed under sedation. Coroner Ray McGoldrick said tonight that he would decide tomorrow, after speaking to Mrs. Hemingway, whether to hold an inquest. The writer was discharged from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., last Monday after two months of treatment for hypertension (high blood pressure) and what a Mayo spokesman called a "very old" case of hepatitis. He had been treated there last year for the same conditions and had been released Jan. 23 after fifty-six days. About a month ago, Mr. Hemingway's physician at the clinic described his health as "excellent." The author had been worried about his weight, 200 pounds. He was six feet tall. Mr. Hemingway and his wife, who drove from Rochester, arrived Friday night at this village on the outskirts of Sun Valley.

Chuck Atkinson, a Ketchum motel owner who has been a friend of Mr. Hemingway for twenty years, was with him yesterday. He said, "He seemed to be in good spirits. We didn't talk about anything in particular. I think he spent last night at home." However, Marshal Les Jankow, another friend and the first law officer to reach the scene, said residents had told him that Mr. Hemingway had "looked thinner and acted depressed." At the time of the shooting, Mrs. Hemingway, the only other person in the house, lay asleep in a bedroom upstairs. The shot woke her and she went down the stairs to find her husband's body near a gun rack in the foyer. Mrs. Hemingway told friends that she had been unable to find any note. Expert on Firearms Mr. Hemingway was an ardent hunter and an expert on firearms. His father, Dr. Clarence E. Hemingway, was also devoted to hunting. He shot himself to death at his home in Oak Park, Ill., in 1928 at the age of 57, despondent over a diabetic condition.

The death weapon was a Civil War pistol that had been owned by the physician's father. The theme of a father's suicide cropped up frequently in Mr. Hemingway's short stories and at least one novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Mr. Hemingway was given his first shotgun at the age of 10. As an adult, he sought out danger. He was wounded by mortar shells in Italy in World War I and narrowly escaped death in the Spanish Civil War when three shells plunged into his hotel room. In World War II, he was injured in a taxi accident that took place in a blackout. The author nearly died of blood poisoning on one African safari; he and his wife walked away from an airplane crash in 1954 on another big-game hunt. Mr. Hemingway, who owned two estates in Cuba and a home in Key West, Fla., started coming to Ketchum twenty years ago. He bought his home here from Robert Topping about three years ago. It is a large, ultramodern concrete structure that sits on a hillside near the banks of the Wood River. The windows give upon a panoramic view of the Sawtooth Mountains.

To Be Buried in Ketchum "The funeral and burial will be in Ketchum," Mr. McGoldrick said. "This was Mr. Hemingway's home, he loved it here." Under a new Idaho law that took effect yesterday, the chief law-enforcement officer must make an investigation into every case of violent death and determine the cause. He may hold an inquest if he wishes, but it is not mandatory. Late in the day, Mr. McGoldrick said about the shooting: "I can only say at this stage that the wound was self-inflicted. The wound was in the head. I couldn't say it was accidental and I couldn't say it was suicide. There wasn't anybody there." The coroner said that the Sheriff did not have to hand in his report on the death "for several days." "If anything comes up indicating foul play, he may hold an inquest," he said.

"I don't think he'll hold an inquest but, based on new evidence, it could be called at any time." He added: "He doesn't have to state in his report whether it was accidental or suicide." Confers With Friends "Mary felt it was accidental and I hope that's the way it will go out," Mr. Atkinson said. "But maybe we will have to change our plans and hold an inquest. I know that 'Papa' [Mr. Hemingway's nickname] wouldn't give a damn how it came out in the papers." Previously, Mr. Atkinson had been busy trying to reach members of Mr. Hemingway's immediate family. He telephoned Mrs. Jasper J. Jepson, the novelist's sister, who said that she would fly to Ketchum immediately. The author's 28-year-old son Gregory, a University of Miami medical student, will fly here from Miami tomorrow. Another son, Patrick, according to Mr. Atkinson, is on a safari in Africa and a third, John, is fishing in Oregon.

Mourned by Kennedy Hyannis Port, Mass., July 2 (UPI)--President Kennedy mourned tonight the death of Ernest Hemingway, whom he called one of America's greatest authors and "one of the great citizens of the world." The President, who is spending the Fourth of July weekend here with his family, issued a statement after hearing of Mr. Hemingway's death. Being Ernest: John Walsh unravels the mystery behind Hemingway's suicide | The Independent Profiles Being Ernest: John Walsh unravels the mystery behind Hemingway's suicide America's most celebrated writer, Ernest Hemingway, ended his life 50 years ago &ndash; in a manner his biographers have struggled to explain.

Friday 10 June 2011 23:00 BST Click to follow Being Ernest: John Walsh unravels the mystery behind Hemingway's suicide 1/3 3/3 Getty Images Fifty years ago, in the early hours of Sunday 2 July, 1961, Ernest Hemingway, America's most celebrated writer and a titan of 20th-century letters, awoke in his house in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, rose from his bed, taking care not to wake his wife Mary, unlocked the door of the storage room where he kept his firearms, and selected a double-barrelled shotgun with which he liked to shoot pigeons. He took it to the front of the house and, in the foyer, put the twin barrels against his forehead, reached down, pushed his thumb against the trigger and blew his brains out. His death was timed at 7am. Witnesses who saw the body remarked that he had chosen from his wardrobe a favourite dressing gown that he called his "emperor's robe". They might have been reminded of the words of Shakespeare's Cleopatra, just before she applied the asp to her flesh: "Give me my robe.

Put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me". His widow Mary told the media that it was an unfortunate accident, that Ernest had been cleaning one of his guns when it accidentally went off. The story was splashed on the front page of all American newspapers. It took Mary Welsh Hemingway several months to admit that her husband's death was suicide; and it's taken nearly 50 years to piece together the reasons why this giant personality, this rumbustious man of action, this bullfighter, deep-sea fisherman, great white hunter, war hero, gunslinger and four-times-married, all-round tough guy, whom every red-blooded American male hero-worshipped, should do himself in. How could he? Why would he? Successive biographers – AE Hochtner, Carlos Baker, KS Lynn, AJ Monnier, Anthony Burgess – have chewed over the available facts, his restless travelling, his many amours, the peaks and troughs of his writing career. But eventually it took a psychiatrist from Houston, Texas, to hold up all the evidence to the light and announce his disturbing conclusions.

The idealised life of Ernest Hemingway, the one the writer himself wanted the world to buy, was simple: he was the perfect man, the perfect synthesis of brain and brawn. Driven by a thirst for adventure, he was a swashbuckling, hard-drinking pugilist who loved being in the thick of the action, whether in the front line of battle or within charging distance of a water buffalo. He also happened to be the finest writer around, disdaining the grandiose wordiness of Victorian prose for a clean, stripped-back simplicity, conveying emotion by what was not said as much as by what was. Wounded on the Italian front in the First World War, he was a handsome convalescent who fell in love with a pretty nurse and wrote A Farewell to Arms as a result. In the 1920s, he was at the forefront of American writers and artists who hung out in Paris, "being geniuses together". They included F Scott Fitzgerald, who (according to A Moveable Feast) once showed Hemingway his penis and confessed his worry that it was too small to satisfy his wife Zelda; Hemingway kindly reassured him it was OK.

In the 1930s, he went to Spain to fight for the republic against Franco and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which a brave American hero falls in love with a peasant guerrilla called Maria. In the Second World War, he was at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. After the war he retired with his fourth wife to Cuba, where he fished for marlins and wrote The Old Man and the Sea, won the Nobel Prize, was lionised wherever he went – but was killed in an unfortunate firearm accident. That's the official story. In the years after his death, however, the jigsaw pieces of a counter-life gradually began to emerge. His war record, for instance. Hemingway was only 18 when he signed up for the First World War – but it was as a non-combatant. He had a defective left eye, inherited from his mother, which kept him out of battle. He went to Italy to man the Red Cross canteens and evacuate the wounded. Helping a wounded man to safety one evening, he was shot in the leg and hospitalised in Milan, with three other patients and 18 nurses.

Though his dalliance with Sister Agnew von Kurovsky was unconsummated, he fell in love with European culture and manners, swanned about in an Italian cloak, drank wine and affected a clipped delivery borrowed from a British officer, Eric Dorman-Smith. In Paris, where he enjoyed a temporary idyll with his first wife Hadley and their baby John (or "Bumby"), Hemingway started to make his name as a writer – but also to display dangerous mood swings, irascibility, spite and a compulsion to turn against those who helped him. He dumped Hadley and the baby and took up with Pauline Pfeiffer, a decision for which he was racked with nightmares of guilt, and moved to Key West, Florida. For some reason, he became obsessed with bullfighting: the glorification of blood, the spilt horse-guts, the matador's passes with the cape and sword, the art of killing. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway seemed to be working out some personal philosophy about death, but it was hard to follow. The critic Max Eastman complained that his prose style had become the equivalent of "false hair on the chest".

Unable to participate directly in killing bulls, Hemingway decamped to Mombasa where he could legitimately blaze away at lions and kudu. Not content with land-based mayhem, he bought a 38-foot cruiser called the Pilar to fish, in Key West and Havana, for marlin and other aquatic creatures twice the size of himself. Between 1928 and 1936, he seemed to spend months posing beside up-ended fish trophies, the self-burnished image of the muscular man of action, handsome, tanned, drinking with the sailors in Sloppy Joe's bar. He went to Spain during the civil war, not to fight, like George Orwell, but because he was commissioned to report on it for the North American Newspaper Alliance – and because his new love, Martha Gellhorn, was going there. He stressed many times that he wasn't taking sides, and didn't want to see the USA embroiled in a foreign war.

In Madrid, despite the bombardment, he had the time of his life – enjoying caviar and vodka at the Gaylord Hotel, the Russian HQ, making a movie called The Spanish Earth and supplying its gravelly commentary, writing his broadly fictional dispatches for newspapers that criticised them as "very inefficient". He looked the part of a hunky warrior, but he was a lucky dilettante, who could have left Spain any time he liked. He wrote a play about Madrid in 1936 called The Fifth Column, about Dorothy, a plucky female journalist, who falls for Philip, a tough, intrepid, hard-drinking spy masquerading as a war correspondent. Self-projection turned into self-parody. When America entered the Second World War in 1944, Hemingway got himself to England on "priority war business" – writing pieces about the RAF for Collier's magazine. It was a tough assignment. He took a room at the Dorchester, where he held court as the Great American Writer and went to parties, receiving compliments on his beardy, macho wonderfulness.

When he was concussed in a car accident that followed a drunken party with Robert Capa the photographer, Martha Gellhorn – who'd travelled to England in a ship packed with high explosives – visited him in hospital and laughed at his footling mock-heroics. As though stung into action, he headed for the war, joining the invasion fleet to Normandy and, later, General Patton's armoured divisions. He was a so-so war correspondent who was simultaneously a sort-of-warrior. At the liberation of Paris, he was found in a hotel with a small private army. When asked to leave by a French general, he liberated the Traveller's Club and the Ritz, taking a room at the latter to entertain his new love, Mary Welsh... It's easy to be spiteful about Hemingway. All his posturing, his editing of the truth, his vainglorious fibbing can obscure his undoubted bravery. He loved being in the thick of the war – the tank advance through the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge – dodging bullets, watching men being shot to hell all around him. But it's hard to shake off the feeling that what he was doing wasn't bravery, but psychotic self-dramatisation.

And when you inspect the image of Hemingway-as-hero, you uncover an extraordinary sub-stratum of self-harming. You discover that, for just over half of his life, Hemingway seemed hell-bent on destroying himself. It was about the time he was finishing A Farewell to Arms, in 1928, when he learnt that his father Clarence had shot himself in the head with a Civil War revolver, that Hemingway's life first began to crack apart. The most obvious external evidence was a succession of bizarre physical accidents, many of which were bashes on the head. One, in Paris, left him with a split head needing nine stitches, after he yanked the chain in the bathroom, thinking it was the lavatory flush, and pulled the skylight down on top of him. He became weirdly accident-prone. His car accident that occasioned his row with Martha saw him hurled through the windscreen, lacerating his scalp and requiring 57 stitches. Three months later, he came flying off a motorbike evading German fire in Normandy. He suffered headaches, tinnitus, diplopia, showed speech and memory problems for months.

Back in Cuba after the war, he tore open his forehead on the rear-view mirror when his car skidded. Five years later, while drinking, he slipped on the deck of the Pilar, and concussed himself. Why, you'd almost think he was trying to emulate his late father, and his self-imposed head wound. The most egregious injury, however, occurred in January 1954. He and Mary took off from Nairobi in a small plane, heading for the Belgian Congo. Near Victoria Falls it crash-landed in a thorn thicket and Ernest sprained his shoulder. As rumours of his death spread, he and his companions were rescued and put in a 12-seater De Havilland Rapide which – incredibly – burst into flames on the runway. Finding the door jammed, Hemingway volunteered to use his head as a battering ram, butted the door twice and got out. He liked to present it as a classic example of superman pragmatism, but it nearly killed him. He fractured his skull and lacerated his scalp; cerebrospinal fluid seeped from his ear.

In Nairobi he was diagnosed with grave overall concussion, temporary vision-loss in the right eye, deafness in left ear, paralysis of sphincter muscle, first degree burns on face, arms and head, sprained arm, shoulder and leg, crushed vertebra and ruptured liver, spleen and kidney. Astonishingly, he was at it again only a month later: helping to extinguish a small fire, he fell into the flames and suffered second degree burns on legs, belly, chest, lips, left hand and right forearm. Hemingway's taste for chronic self-immolation was matched by his prodigious feats of drinking: "The manager of the Gritti Palace in Venice tells me," wrote Anthony Burgess later, "that three bottles of Valpolicella first thing in the day were nothing to him, then there were the daquiris, Scotch, tequila, bourbon, vermouthless martinis. The physical punishment he took from alcohol was ...

actively courted; the other punishments were gratuitous – kidney trouble from fishing in chill Spanish waters, a torn, groin muscle from something unspecified when he was visiting Palencia, a finger gashed to the bone in a mishap with a punchbag..." The drinking got worse after his father shot himself. Ernest went to a doctor in 1937, complaining of stomach pains; liver damage was diagnosed and he was told to give up alcohol. He refused. Seven years later, in 1944, when Martha Gellhorn visited him in hospital, she found empty liquor bottles under his bed. In 1957, his doctor friend AJ Monnier wrote urgently, "My dear Ernie, you must stop drinking alcohol. This is definitely of the utmost importance." But even then, he couldn't stop. What was bugging Hemingway? Why all the drinking, the macho excess, the manic displays of swaggering? Why was he so drawn to war, shooting, boxing and conflict? Why did he want to kill so many creatures? Was he trying to prove something? Or blot something out of his life?

Some answers were offered in 2006 by a long article in the American Psychiatry magazine, called "Ernest Hemingway: A Psychological Autopsy of a Suicide". It was by Christopher D Martin, whose official title is Instructor and Staff Psychiatrist at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas. Martin had read widely in the 15 or so biographies and memoirs of Hemingway and offered his expert analysis – based, inevitably, at second hand, but still a convincing evaluation. He had no trouble in diagnosing the author as suffering from "bipolar disorder, alcohol dependence, traumatic brain injury, and probably borderline and narcissistic personality traits". He notes that many in the Hemingway family – his father and mother, their siblings, his own son and his grand-daughter Margaux – were prone to manic-depression (Margaux's was the fifth, or possibly sixth, suicide in four generations) and suggests that it was Ernest's manic episodes that drove him to his astonishing feats of creativity. But he locates the writer's trauma in two childhood experiences.

It seems that it was his mother Grace's habit to dress him, as a child, in long white frocks and fashion his hair like a little girl's. It was a 19th-century custom to dress infants alike, but she took it to extremes. She referred to him, in his cute lacy dress, as "Dutch dolly". She said she was his Sweetie, or, as he pronounced it, "Fweetee". Once, when Ernest was two, Grace called him a doll once too often. He replied, "I not a Dutch dolly... Bang, I shoot Fweetee". But she also praised him for being good at hunting in the woods and fishing in the stream in boys' clothes. It was too confusing for a sensitive kid. He always hated her, and her controlling ways. He always referred to her as "that bitch". He'd spend the rest of his life in a galloping parody of masculinity. Dutch dolly indeed. He'd show the bitch there was no confusion in his head. "I shoot Fweetee." The trouble was, he also wanted to shoot his father.

Clarence Hemingway was a barrel-chested, six-foot bully, a disciplinarian who beat his son with a razor strop. Ernest didn't retaliate directly. He bottled it up and subsumed it into a ritual, in which he'd hide in a shed in the family backyard with a loaded shotgun and take aim at his father's head. Martin speculates that, when Clarence shot himself, Hemingway, aged 29, felt terrible guilt that he'd fantasised about killing him. Unable to handle this, he took to blaming his mother for his father's death. "I hate her guts and she hates mine," he wrote in 1949. "She forced my father to suicide." After Clarence's death, Hemingway told a friend, "My life was more or less shot out from under me, and I was drinking much too much entirely through my own fault". He suffered a chronic identity crisis. Henceforth he could be warm and generous or ruthless and overbearing. His friendships were often unstable (he could turn vicious or cruel, even with supposedly close pals) and his relations with women were full of conflict.

He sulked like a child when, on his first safari, his wife Pauline shot a lion before he did. And he was pursued, for the rest of his life, by a colossal death wish – either to join his late father, or to expatiate his guilt at his father's death by mirroring it. Death took up residence at the heart of Hemingway's life, a constant spur to his creative imagination, a constant companion, a dark, secret lover. Themes of violence and suicide informed his stories from the start. His letters are full of references to his future suicide. And when not contemplating his own death, he was putting himself into danger and combat as though to hasten it. Wars, rebellion, bull-running in Pamplona, big-game hunting in Africa, fishing in Havana – they were all his way of throwing himself before the Grim Reaper. "I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish," he told Ava Gardner, "so I won't kill myself." And of course writing was his way of evading the need to die. He could polish his real-life experiences at war, in Italy, Spain, the Ardennes, and burnish his life in hindsight.

Being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954 must have been a triumphant affirmation of his genius, but he worried that, after receiving the prize, most laureates never wrote anything worthwhile again. Luckily, after finding two trunks of notes from the 1920s in a Paris hotel, he was able to manage one more book: A Moveable Feast, his touching memoir of being young, poor and happy in the French capital, with his first wife and baby, before everything started going to hell. After 1960, however, he found he could no longer write. The words wouldn't come. Depression came instead, and with it (as we learn from AE Hotchner's memoir, Papa Hemingway), paranoid delusions. He thought that the two men he saw working late in a bank were "Feds", checking his bank account for irregularities. He thought his friends were trying to kill him. When his car slightly grazed another vehicle, he fretted that he'd be thrown in jail. It was a sorry thing, to see the epitome of "grace under pressure" succumbing to dementia. He was given medication and, horribly, a course of electroconvulsive shock treatments.

In the spring of 1961, he was asked to contribute a single sentence to a presentation volume for John F Kennedy's inauguration. Hemingway couldn't oblige. "It just won't come any more," he told Hotchner, and wept. In April, his wife Mary found him sitting with a shotgun and two shells. He was sent to hospital in Ketchum, Idaho, his birthplace, but he tried twice more to end his life, once by walking into the path of a plane taxiing on the runaway. There was a two-month period of hospitalisation and comparative peace and quiet, when he appeared sane to his doctor and deranged to his wife. He seemed to be acting, right to the end. He was released home one more time, had a picnic lunch with wine (he saw some state troopers and was sure they'd arrest him for possess of alcohol) and, the next morning, shot himself. "The accumulating factors contributing to his burden of illness at the end of his life are staggering," writes Martin, listing Hemingway's bipolar mood disorder, depression, chronic alcoholism, repetitive traumatic brain injuries, the onset of psychosis. But it seems clear that the defining problem of his life was his experience of childhood.

His confusion over gender, his Oedipal desire to kill his father for beating him, together led to what Martin calls "a retreat into a defensive façade of hyper-masculinity and self-sufficiency". Building and sustaining the myth of Hemingway the Man's Man took courage and determination, but it was something he needed to do – and when it dwindled, along with the all-important capacity to write, he had no answer except to go the same way as his father. The image of his father, a moody, bullying, depressive man, but a role model none the less, haunted his life. He wanted to revivify him, in order to release himself from the responsibility for his death. He wanted to be the big, strong, heroic man that the world could call "Papa".

Fighter, writer, lover: a life in brief 1898 Ernest Hemingway is born in Oak Park, Illinois 1918 Wounded in Italy while working for the Red Cross during the First World War 1921 Marries first wife Hadley Richardson; they move to Paris 1923 First son John is born 1927 Divorced by Hadley, he marries Pauline Pfeiffer 1928 His father Clarence shoots himself in the head 1937 Works as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls is published; Hemingway marries Martha Gellhorn 1944 Reports on the liberation of Paris; begins relationship with Mary Welsh who he will marry in 1946 1952 The novella The Old Man and the Sea is published 1954 Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1961 Shoots himself in the head in Ketchum, Idaho More about: Famous Suicides: 10 Celebrities Who Committed Suicide - EnkiVillage Famous Suicides: 10 Celebrities Who Committed Suicide Famous Suicides:

 10 Celebrities Who Committed Suicide Celebrities have been around forever, whether movie or television stars, rock stars, or those famous for just being wealthy.

Many of them have gotten into trouble with drugs or alcohol, but others have, for whatever reason, committed suicide. These famous celebrity suicides continue to be talked about and written about and never seem to leave the public eye. We are here to make a list of the 10 most famous suicides and truly wish all of them could rest in peace. Famous Suicides: 10 Celebrities Who Committed Suicide These 10 famous suicides are ordered by the year of the incident, from the latest to the oldest. 1 Robin Williams (1951-2014) This could be most shocking famous suicide in 2014. Robin Williams was an actor and comedian who had a long career, including television shows such as Mork and Mindy, and films such as Good Morning Vietnam (1987), Popeye (1980) and The Birdcage (1996). His career began in San Francisco and Los Angeles with stand-up comedy in the 1970s and quickly progressed after an appearance on the hit show Happy Days. Williams has had a public battle with addiction and mental illness and in 2014 was struggling with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.

Williams took his own life on August 11, 2014. What a lost for all his fans and the whole world. 2 Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014) This is another one of the famous suicides that I could never imagine it's even possible to happen. Philip Seymour Hoffman was a prolific film and stage actor with a stellar career that included such films as Magnolia (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and Charlie Wilson’s War (2007). He also portrayed writer Truman Capote in the 2005 film Capote. He had a history of drug addiction and after years of sobriety, relapsed in 2012, but still he died in February, 2014 due to an overdose of a combination of drugs. 3 L’Wren Scott (1964-2014) Model, fashion designer and costume designer, L’Wren Scott was also a long-time girlfriend of Mick Jagger. Born Lula Bambrough in Utah, she began her career as a model and later established herself as a celebrity stylist, working for such celebrities as Madonna and Julia Roberts.

She was found by her assistant hanged in her Manhattan apartment in March of 2014 and police reported no foul play in the designer’s death. No reason for her suicide has ever been determined. 4 Lee Thompson Young (1984-2013) Young was an American actor most known for his role on the Disney Channel television series The Famous Jett Jackson and in the film Friday Night Lights (2004). He more recently starred in the television show Rizzoli & Isles, a police crime drama. Born in South Carolina, Young began acting in high school. He got his break after moving to New York City in 1996. In 2013 after failing to show up on the set of Rizzoli & Isles, police were called to check on him at his apartment. Young was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head. He had struggled with depression and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. 5 Whitney Houston (1963-2012) Some may argue this is not a suicide, but still we put Whitney Houston into this category of famous suicides.

As a world wide known American actress and singer, Whitney Houston is the only artist to chart seven consecutive times on the Billboard Hot 100 and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most awarded female music act of all time. She had a tumultuous marriage to fellow singer Bobby Brown and struggled for many years with drug addiction. Houston was found dead in a hotel room in Beverly Hills of an accidental drowning in the bathtub. Cocaine abuse and heart disease were deemed contributing factors, but speculation is that she accidentally overdosed. 6 Tony Scott (1944-2012) Tony Scott was a British film producer and director known for such movies as Top Gun (1986), True Romance (1993) and Man on Fire (2004). He is the younger brother of director Ridley Scott. Tony Scott committed suicide by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, California and witnesses say he didn’t hesitate before jumping to his death. Police reported notes left behind in his car and at his home, but the contents of those notes have never been revealed. It has been rumored that Scott had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, but his family vehemently denies the rumor.

7 Amy Winehouse (1983-2011) An English singer and songwriter, Winehouse had a deep sultry voice that lent itself to hit after hit on the music charts. Her second album Back to Black in 2008 garnered Winehouse five Grammy Awards, making her the first British female singer to win five Grammys in a single year. Amy Winehouse had a chaotic life and a very public struggle with alcoholism and bulimia. Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning in July of 2011 in what was declared an accidental suicide. 8 Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) American author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson became a well-known counter culture figure in the 1960s and coined the term Gonzo Journalism to describe his style of writing. He was long associated with Rolling Stone magazine and one of his most famous novels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream was turned into a movie in 1998 that starred Johnny Depp. Thompson used drugs and alcohol throughout his life and suffered many health problems in his later years as a result.

In 2005 he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. 9 Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, Marilyn Monroe was a model and actress who would become one of the most famous women in history. She was a blond bombshell that had been linked romantically to President John F. Kennedy and was married to author Arthur Miller and baseball player Joe DiMaggio. Some of her well-known films include Some Like it Hot (1959), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and The Misfits (1961). Monroe was found dead in her home due to an overdose of barbiturates and her death has been hotly debated as being an intentional suicide, accidental suicide or murder for decades. 10 Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Famed American author Ernest Hemingway is probably best known for such works as The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He began his career as a journalist and many of his novels were based on personal experience.

Hemingway was almost killed in two separate plane crashes and suffered health problems in the years toward the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway shot himself with a shotgun to the head in 1961 after years of illness and mental deterioration. His brother and sister had also committed suicide. This's odd to say this one complete this famous suicides list, though we truly hoped this had not happened. ANY IDEAS ABOUT THIS TOPIC? Please Log In or add your name and email to post the comment. NAME:

Question: Which US author committed suicide with a shotgun in 1961?
Answer: Ernest Hemingway